The plugin works invisibly in the background, allowing you to quickly and effortlessly enrich product information as required.

This removes the need to do work two or three times, downloading, uploading, mapping, or exporting information between different locations and/or formats. This means smoother, quicker assembly of the precise information you need.

How does it work?

This plugin puts you directly in touch with Makersite’s live, cloud-based product analytics service and allows you to pull the information you need directly from there.

To start using the plugin, simply:

Unzip the file into a temporary folder on your desktop and click setup.exe.

Follow the instructions to complete the installation.

Start Excel and you will see a new ‘Makersite’ menu option:

You will see the menu separated into 4 sections:

Authentication | BOM Tools | Mapping Tools | Analytics.

These are explained in the tutorial that will be sent to you after you download the plug in.

Mapping

The bulk of the work is in mapping a line item in your spreadsheet to a dataset on Makersite. You can do this easily by right clicking on the part name or material cell and selecting the “Map material” option as shown below.

Figure 4: Material mapping

Search for the appropriate dataset and select it. A reference will be placed in the Mapping column of your spreadsheet.

When you perform a mapping, you link a process, material, or component to a makersite product. For simplicity, we call this a dataset, but it is much more than that. All kinds of information about the industrial process network can ultimately be traced back to these objects – environmental impacts, processing options, companies that make them, etc. For instance, an object could have multiple environmental profiles depending on the process technology, country of origin etc. These can be filtered during the discovery process and enable a higher resolution analysis.

Discovery

Once all or part of your BOM or recipe is mapped, you can use this option to discover information about your product.

Figure 5: Layers

Results

Simply choose a layer and the Makersite will deliver results right into your spreadsheet.

Figure 6: Results

Key plugin functionality

DATA ACCESS

Map to all existing datasets on Makersite

Access to all open data for free members

Premium subscription members get access to proprietary or licensed datasets

DATASET DOCUMENTATION

If multiple supply chain options are found for a given row, this is indicated with a comment

A hyperlink will take you to the documentation of the dataset on the Makersite platform

ALTERNATIVE SUPPLY CHAINS

View alternative supply/production routes by right clicking on corresponding cell and selecting the “Alternatives” option.

EASY SCENARIO ANALYSIS

Analyse the impact of switching a material, perform a mapping again, and click DISCOVER.

The plugin will display results in a new column alongside the old results for easy, iterative comparisons.

Who’s it for?

This plugin is designed for anyone looking to research, design and/or manufacture new products and needing access to environmental information for easy and rapid collation and analysis. This may include: